OWM is moving away from using city-location API to fetch weather

[ArtieRomero]

I have been communicating with OWM about my Weather Displays in the USA having difficulties with the API call. After a long period of working fine, the Weather Displays suddenly stopped working and I found that making a small change in the city,state formatting in the Weather Display's code for making the API call fixed the problem. I passed my problem and resolution to OWM for their information.

OWM responded to say that API requests by city name are deprecated. See their response, below:

"Please use Geocoder API if you need to automatically convert city names and zip codes to geo coordinates and the other way around.

Please note that API requests by city name, zip-codes and city id have been deprecated. Although they are still available for use, bug fixing and updates are no longer available for this functionality."

This message is also on the OWM webpage: https://openweathermap.org/current#name

Would it be too much trouble to modify the Weather DIsplay's code to use Lat and Long to make the API call? Thanks

[G6EJD]

OK, I’ll do that, keep a look out. I’ll need to consider how to do it as easily as possible.

[ArtieRomero]

I am just an amateur (a chemist, actually) and experimented, replacing "Melksham,UK" with a made-up example lat=38.50,long=-90.63 in your "Example API call for weather data" in the owm_credentials page of code and this worked when entering the string as a URL query at OWM.

My initial attempt was to try to use the lat and long information in the weather program where the code asks for city and country in the owm_credentials tab.

However, the OWM API formatting for city,country based API calls incorporates a preceding "q=" before the city,country. If it was not for that, I think that one could simply replace "String City =" with "String Latitude = " and replace "String Country = " with "String Longitude = " where these occur and go on to use the lat and long values for the city.

This would also require a likewise modification of the common.h code in the SRC folder (including eliminating that "q=" text. I think that would do it.

Note the inclusion of the text (yellow highlighting) for city,country, below: Lat and long-based API call format: https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?lat={lat}&lon={lon}&appid={API key} https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys

e.g. https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?lat=44.34&lon=10.99&appid={API key} https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys

City and state-based API call format: https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q={city name},{country code} &appid={API key} https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys

e.g. https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London,uk&appid={API key} https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys

On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 2:24 PM G6EJD @.***> wrote:

OK, I’ll do that, keep a look out. I’ll need to consider how to do it as easily as possible.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/G6EJD/ESP32-e-Paper-Weather-Display/issues/254#issuecomment-2075676800, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BBK2GROP6V4RSXGRD7YTXFLY7ABGNAVCNFSM6AAAAABGXNXFJCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDANZVGY3TMOBQGA . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[G6EJD]

I’ll give your idea a try, the API call is constructed in the folder ’src’ then common.h and the function ‘obtain_wx_data‘ You’ll find the files in the library folder.

[ArtieRomero]

I kept digging and found the SRC folder that you mention and see the code there.
I will play with this tonight. These changes should work. And users can easily obtain their locations' lat and long from OWM which appears to be keeping that service.

[ArtieRomero]

David,

I managed to get the Lat and Lon inputs to work in the code to replace City and Country.

Below are the changes I made, shown with my location in the town of Wildwood with its Lat and Lon coordinates.

In the owm_credentials.h tab, I replaced the "String Country =" with these two additional lines to hold the Lat and Lon information. Although the "String City =" information is no longer needed to make the OWM API call, this input is still used to place the location name at the top of the e-Paper display, so it is kept.

String City = "Wildwood"; String Lat = "38.68"; String Lon = "-90.20";

I also went into the sketchbook/libraries/ESP32-e-Paper-Weather-Display-master/src folder and used Notepad to open and edit the common.h file. In this file I edited this preexisting line

String uri = "/data/2.5/" + RequestType + "?q=" + City + "," + Country + "&APPID=" + apikey + "&mode=json&units=" + units + "&lang=" + Language;

And changed it to:

String uri = "/data/2.5/" + RequestType + "?" + "lat=" + Lat + "&lon=" + Lon + "&APPID=" + apikey + "&mode=json&units=" + units + "&lang=" + Language;

And then saved and exited the common.h file.

This is all it took. For readers, one can obtain their Lat and Lon coordinates from OWM, but it is just as convenient and more precise to use Google Maps on a computer or smartphone: find the location on the map and then drop a "pin" on the location. On a smartphone this is done by pressing the blue icon in the lower left, labeled "Explore" and then touching the location on the map. After dropping the pin, scroll to the bottom of the screen and see the latitude and longitude for that location. On a Windows PC running Google Maps, select the icon in the lower right that looks like a target and then select the location on the map. Cheers

On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 3:46 PM G6EJD @.***> wrote:

I’ll give your idea a try, the API call is constructed in the folder ’src’ then common.h and the function ‘obtain_wx_data‘ You’ll find the files in the library folder.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/G6EJD/ESP32-e-Paper-Weather-Display/issues/254#issuecomment-2075811187, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BBK2GRLQTR7JSQFYWQWSXBTY7AKZRAVCNFSM6AAAAABGXNXFJCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDANZVHAYTCMJYG4 . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[G6EJD]

I have now updated the common.h and all of the examples to include LAT LON variables.

Many thanks for your help.

The next change will be API 3.0 introduction in June 24, but at the moment the changes are scant, I'm hoping it will be 2.5 changes to 3.0, but it could be just 3, who knows!